Shofar FTP Archive File: camps/auschwitz/auschwitz.011

Archive/File: camps/auschwitz auschwitz.011
Last-Modified: 1994/01/13
Subject: Testimony of Ludwiz Worl
Quoted from "Auschwitz: A Report on the Proceedings Against Robert Karl
Ludwig Mulka and Others Before the Court at Frankfurt", By Bernd
Naumann, 1966, published by Frederick A. Praeger, NY.
p . 114:
--------
The fifty-eight-year-old Munich grocer Ludwig Worl, a stocky, powerful
Bavarian, now takes the witness stand.
In the summer of 1943 - the witness, a former senior camp inmate,
testifies - a ghetto not far from Auschwitz was cleaned out and
30,000-40,000 people gassed and cremated in the huge crematories of
Birkenau. An SS officer "for some reason or other" put the children
into his, Worl's, care. Worl thought they were saved, because at the
end of 1943 a new camp commandant came to Auschwitz. Hoess was
succeeded by Liebehenschel, whom the SS later on replaced because he was
too soft. He stopped the selections and had the notorious standing cell
demolished.
But one day on January, 1944, there was another selection: 600 sick
prisoners unable to work were sorted out and sent to the gas chambers.
Worl thought that a transport to another camp was being assembled in
front of the laundry, when suddenly he was surrounded by the children in
his care. They clutched at his legs imploringly and told him that they
were to be gassed with the others.
"Even the four and five-year-old knew it. They rolled up their shirts
and showed me their little arms: 'Look how strong we are'."
Worl, appalled, rushed over to Dr. Rohde and asked him to notify
Liebehenschel immediately. The medical officer called headquarters
and received the devastating information that the selection had been
ordered by Berlin. There was nothing to be done.
Worl ran out to the camp street and saw the defendant Kaduk, pistol in
hand, driving the pleading children towards the gas chambers.
Worl jumps out from the witness chair and shouts: "Where is Kaduk? You
shoved a pistol against their backs, like this, and this", and he
demonstrates how Kaduk drove the children on.

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